


Shadows Follow Me Home

by Shanedan (shanedan)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Cuddles, Depression, Discussion of character death, Kissing, Like, M/M, McHanzo Week, PTSD, a pair of amount of patting, also this gets deep, drug usage, he gets roasted hard and hanzo spits on his corpse and jesse witnesses it all, uhhh, winston gets roasted, yeah like thats just hanzos mcpackage right there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8906893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shanedan/pseuds/Shanedan
Summary: All it took for Hanzo to fall for him was a few life-threatening battles and bitter heart to hearts over coffee.





	1. Firsts: The First Time Mccree Saw Hanzo Lose his Temper, Wield a Weapon and Miss A Strike All In One Week

**Author's Note:**

> hey, this is for McHanzo week! this is going to be a lot... heavier? than other McHanzo fics but its going to be the realistic kind of heavy with my own takes on the canon. trigger warning for frank discussion of drug usage and blood and gore.
> 
> it's kind of a continuum! like vignettes in time except for the AU one, maybe!

From the moment Hanzo had officially joined Overwatch, Winston had eyed his Stormbow with disbelief. An archaic weapon, he claimed. Couldn’t quite measure up to the accuracy and deadliness of guns. Hanzo had nettled, stiffened-- he tried to explain that it was an art he’d been practicing since he was _five_ , with the best masters money and blackmail could buy. Tried to explain the electro-magnetic pull of the arrow head, the precise geometry of the scatter arrow that could take down many at once, the modified pull-system assisted by ATP-nanites in his arm, but...

“Archaic,” Winston said. “But I suppose you’d be good for defense, with setup time.”

“You will never meet a bowman like me, ape!”

The ape comment sealed it. Hanzo was put on the defense team permanently; it was practically like getting benched. They were rarely given information in time to arrive ahead of Talon and set up a defensive line; instead they often attacked the point, took the merchandise by force. The best Hanzo could be settled with was escorting an annoying omnic director who nettled him through his cracked window.

_I’m not paying you to go slow!_

Hanzo often fantasized about cracking his omnic face, thought of Genji and thought of his mentor, and did not.

He had a perfect score. His kill count was unprecedented; his other defense cohorts (many of whom were defense-attack, damn _scientist_ got to be on the attack team part-time and he didn’t!) jokingly called him the ‘Clutch-King’. What was clutch? Why was he king of it? Regardless, all Hanzo knew was that he was _good_ , everyone knew he was good, he was so good but still he was stuck watching from the sidelines as attack mission after attack mission transport took off.

The next lull between missions, Hanzo hit his wall hard. He could no longer sit idle in the base, walking the same halls and stewing in his own thoughts and training. He hit the wall like he was running 80 kilometers an hour with no breaks. ‘Accept your limited use,’ one part of Hanzo said, and the other side was slamming open the laboratory door before he could think.

Mccree, the social cowboy who seemed to embody what Hanzo was not, blinked owlishly at him. Winston blinked apeishly at him.

“You will put me on an attack team, or I will resign,” Hanzo said in the resounding silence that followed his entrance. “You are a scientist playing at being a Strike Commander. You are indecisive like a boy ascended to the throne and cannot even make the decisions that will benefit the organization you  foolishly, illegally  revived. You have no way of knowing my true military use, considering you have no military training. ” Winston couldn’t even open his mouth to retort. Mccree’s mouth had dropped open in surprise, and he took off his hat and held it to his chest.

Hanzo strode up the stairs. He stomped, like a brat, the gentle ‘tink tink’ of his prosthetics turned into great metallic strikes.

“I grew up on the forefront of the omnic crisis. I watched my family die around me before you had even left your moon! I have had more formal weapons training than you have had _temporal physics training_ , and yet you bench me in this awful European mess of a base and send me on trips with a robotic menace who I struggle to not maim every time, while you were able to send a child into the space-time continuum with your eyes practically _closed!_ ” Hanzo stops short of Winston, inches from his beastly face with the large canines, and he stares him down. He stares him down like he was still Lord of the Shimada-gumi and Winston was just a small-time thug who dared to disobey him. “And yet… And yet my technologically advanced weapon that has more _electronic components than wood_ , is archaic. You emulate the tactics of Napolaen and _I_ am archaic!” The gorrilla swallows and adjusts his glasses, eyes glued to the floor.

Those thugs did not live long.

“I am more qualified for this position than you are for Strike-Commander.” Venom unbridled, draconic fangs revealed, Hanzo goes in for the kill. He’s aware of the apes insecurity, his crippling self-doubt, and he revels in it. He dares to drown Hanzo in his own solitude and not expect retribution? Unlikely.

“I will repeat myself once more. I _will_ gain a position on the strike team, or I _will_ resign.”

Silence. Hanzo says no more, Winston doesn’t speak, just takes off his glasses and diverts his gaze, Mccree clutches his hat.

Hanzo can hear his own frenzied, furious heartbeat and feels his chest pulse with it.

Mccree lets out a low whistle. “Reckon I jus’ saw you get the chewin’ out of y’life, Winston. Reyes used to do the same t’Morrison, if it’s any consolation.” He puts his hat back on firmly and chews on the lit cigarello burning, always burning in his mouth. “Part of bein’ a leader, bucko!”

“ ‘Nyway, as I was sayin’ about needin’ ranged support’n’surveillance on the strike team,” Mccree trails off and flashes a grin full of yellowed teeth at Hanzo, and the vaquero trains an intense look at Winston.

Hanzo trains an intense look at the ape.

The ape trains an intense look at the floor. “Fine,” he whispers. “Fine. There’s a mission first thing Tuesday morning. Mccree will brief you. Dismissed.”

Mccree and Hanzo recognize hurt feelings when they see them, and they both turn heel and leave the laboratory. Once the door slides shut behind them, Mccree turns to Hanzo and says, “That was a little harsh, even for you. Y’usually hit it once, ouch, what a stinger, but that was just a nonstop combo there. Like a cobra, a viper, a… A…,” Mccree trailed off, snapping his fingers in the air, looking for another descriptor.

“A dragon?” Hanzo adds dryly.

Mccree looks him up and down, his eyes searching and heated. It makes Hanzo feel slightly like a fish out of water. “Right on th’mark, archer.” He drawls.

 

Mccree briefs him. There’s trade of illegally obtained weapons between Los Muertos and Talon happening at Dorado. If they successfully intercept it, they will bolster their own armory, destroy relations between Los Muertos and Talon, and deprive Talon of guns. Any little amount helps. Mccree says he’s familiar with the terrain, explains the high ground, asks how high Hanzo can climb (“As high as needed,”).

“Can you cut off any reinforcements?”

“Yes.”

“Can you report positions and keep track of the teams own position?”

“ _Yes_.”

“What about potential alternate routes, can you do that?”

“Mccree. You will see what the dragon sees, hear what it hears, and go where it goes. I will _not_ fail.”

Mcree rolls his eyes. “Y’know that’s not why I’m grillin’ ya,” he says, and Hanzo did not know. “I’m tryin’ to find the end of y’well of talent. You’re practically an entire intelligence-surveillance team all by yourself!”

Hanzo snorts. He _knows_ that.

“What about on the ground combat, y’do that as well?”

“My arrow finds its mark regardless of angle, cowboy.”

Mccree chuckles. “What about short range?”

Hanzo hesitates. He knows what he’s asking for, but he will avoid it and pray the cowboy does not pursue. “Stormbow can be used as a short range weapon, and I have a variety of hand to hand skills. I was trained in Judo, Karate, Jujutsu, Ninjutsu--,”

“Hanzo, you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Or a bow to a gunfight. It’s like a bat.”

Hanzo knows it’s like a bat, okay?

“I mean, you got any specifically short-range weaponry up your sleeve?”

Not anymore. Not since-- “No.” Hanzo says shortly.

Mccree seems surprised at that. He raises his bushy brows and drawls, “‘Kay. That’s fine, you’re already more than enough,” Mccree shrugs, and relates his new attack plan. Hanzo will be the forward archer, scouting and calling out troop movements and routes for the team as well as taking out damage dealers and other important aspects of the Talon forces, namely their communicators and snipers.

Mccree claims that's all, and Hanzo moves past him to leave and prepare. But Mccree grabs his bicep and says again, “I’m serious, Hanzo. Y’gotta really take out those snipers.”

“I know.” Hanzo mumbles. He was not hard of hearing, he heard Mccree.

“Widowmaker might be there. If there’s the time to take the shot of your life, it’s with her.”

Hanzo thinks he already took the shot of his life, truthfully, but he just says, “Yes.”

 

 

\---------------------------

 

 

“Approaching from north bridge, 12, one heavily armed and medic flanked in the back. No shot,” Hanzo presses the mic clipped to his jaw tight against his mouth. He hears an affirmative “ _Yosh_!” from his brother.

“We’re still recoverin’ from the last raid, we need more time--,” Mccree says.

“I’m workin’ as quick as I can! You’ll be up and at ‘em in a blink, my dudes!” Lucio yells, and Hanzo can barely hear him over the beat-beat of his tech.

“In short, find a shot!” Mccree finishes.

Mccree is surprisingly bossy on the field. Pushy, he demands, he questions, he figures it out and he tells everyone what to do. Hanzo approves. It is how he lead. Mccree does not tell him how to get it done, but _to_ get it done, and leaves the rest to Hanzo. Only soldiers, footmen, the dispensable need direction.

Hanzo slinks along the top of one rooftop, takes a sprinting-jump to the next one, rolls harmlessly and soundlessly across the roof. He crouches low on this rooftop and looks again; there is no sight-line to the medic or the fool with the automatic.

He lunges to another rooftop, effectively flanking them from the side. No sight-line. He crawls across a wall and onto the overpass with one singular window. Talon noticed nothing as he shadowed by.

Sight line.

Within a second, he has two arrows cocked on Stormbow. Carefully he follows their movement, tracks them, watches the rotation of the guard and the clunky footsteps. He tilts his wrist only a few degrees.

Inhale.

Fire.

His two marks go down like bricks, they fall like pinatas. The guard around them pivots and their red-beamed aim goes everywhere; Hanzo slips inside the overhead structure just as rapid fire machine gun fire bombards the cobble stone wall.

Exhale.

Hanzo activates his communicator. “Healer and the fool with the semiautomatic are down. Fire is focused on me, but this is a temporary engagement. Mccree, are you ready to flank?”

“No, I have to make sure that D.va is back on her feet. Hold for five?”

Machine gun fire. Hanzo can hear the men thundering up the steps just to his left.

“Negative. Stormbow is about to come Stormbat, if I am not given assistance.”

“A bat to a gunfight. Only a Shimada… Genji, get in there!” Hanzo hears a snicker and something that sounds suspiciously like _only a shimada can wield the might of the bow-bat_ , but Hanzo elects to ignore it.

Hanzo drops off the other side of the overpass, aims as he falls, and takes out another clueless adversary.

“Foes! Turn your eyes, witness death!” A grey streak that must be Genji yells, and Hanzo can see his sword raised. How clever. They will look at him and fire, and therefore meet death. Reflection: a deadly skill.

Before the men can even react, a shot like lightning echoes through the air and Genji falls back like he was shot.

Which he was.

Genji’s sword falls several stories to the ground below, and a shower of sparks emits from his sword hand. Genji himself falls flat on his chest to take cover on the roof, and within seconds the entirety of the communication line was on fire.  What was that? Hostiles? Genji, Hanzo, report. Medical attention needed?  Hanzo darts to the alley on his left while the Talon troops are confused. He presses one hand to his communicator, flips on active, and scales the wall partway.

“What the hell was that? Genji? Genji, report!”

“私はヒットしました！ 私はクソだよ、それは痛いよ、痛い!” Genji’s voice is strained and mechanical. He continues to curse and rave in Japanese.  
“Genji! English!”  
“I'm unarmed, there’s still five hostiles, and Widowmaker just shot my _fucking sword hand_!”  
“Shit,” Says Hanzo, Mccree, Hana, Lucio, and Reinhardt.  
“I am climbing in my MEKA but she’s half health--,” “Shield is down--” “I can maintain long-range shuriken--” “AMP IT UP!”

“Hanzo,” Mccree says. “Take her out.”

“I do not have visual. 源氏、どこにいるの？”

“彼女は着陸中です。”

Hanzo sprinted to the window and nearly tossed himself out it in his eagerness to see the enemy. He sees nothing, hears nothing.

“No visual! Where is she, Genji?”

“I do not know! I am,” Genji grunted in exertion. “Otherwise occupied!”

Hanzo huffed, scanned the ground again. Nothing. If he cannot see her, he cannot shoot her. In vain, he shoots several detect arrows onto the courtyard below him. Hanzo's UV light enabled contacts show nothing.

“No visual. I will have to hunt her down.”

“あなたは狂ってる？ あなたは弓で狙撃兵を近距離にすることはできません。 Widowmakerにもマシンガンがある！” Genji cooes in his ear.

“I appreciate y’all’s natural chemistry,” two shots of Peacekeeper interrupted him, and distantly the bass of Lucio and the thunder of Reinhardt defended against bullets. “But I need the same information y’all have. What is going on!”

“I--,” Hanzo starts.

“Hanzo wants to hunt down Widowmaker but I’m telling him he can’t take her on close range.”

“Who is to say I cannot!”

“She will cut you down before you get one shot in!”

“Do not underestimate--,”

“I’m not underestimating you, you idiot! If you just picked up your _fucking sword_ again, we wouldn’t even be in this mess!”

The comm grew silent, except for the echo of gunshots and Hana’s mumbled Korean curses.

Hanzo pressed himself to the wall and swallowed the lump in his throat. “I will not.”

“This is stupid. You are a genius with the kantana, and I am alive. Pick it up again.”

“I… I cannot.”

“Of course you can.”

“Genji, you don’t understand, every time I do, I just see--- I just see----,” Hanzos voice clenched shut. He thought of his blood on his hands, slipping down the blade until it pulled into the cavity between his thumb and index finger. The iron smell was in his nose for weeks, and even now he can smell it, remember the efforts he went through just to get the blood from out his fingernails.

He can’t. He can’t, not again, he’s _different_ now, it’s _different_ now--

“Hanzo. We are occupied. Genji is injured. Can you engage Widowmaker with a close range weapon?” Mccree’s voice is so harsh. Commanding.

“I have not used a blade in years---,”

“That’s not what I asked! Can you?”

Hanzo swallowed his pride. “Yes.”

“Engage.”

If he were commander, he would’ve given the same command. If one of his agents had the ability to engage a long term threat and lighten the load on the main force, he would do it. He would tell the soldier to drop all ideals of humanity and individuality. He was not a man with fears; he was a tool, and if he let them, Hanzo would turn him into a weapon.

Mccree tells him nothing like that. The fact is, they are wounded and outnumbered, and Hanzo is able. Hanzo has training and skill and opportunity.

“...Understood. Genji, I do not have a sword.”

“Yosh!”

Within seconds, Genji has appeared at his window, a crackling electric hand smoking a small flame and his sword in the other. He dangles in the window frame. “Brother,” he says. His voicebox crackles.

“Brother,” Hanzo says evenly. He turns off his comm. This conversation is private.

Genji turns off his as well.

“I do not bleed, anymore.” Genji says.

That is not the direction Hanzo was expecting; he furrows his brows and frowns.

“Your fatal strike to my heart disabled it. I run on mostly electrical currents now, no blood involved.”

“This does not help!”

“What I am saying, Hanzo, there is not any blood to be spilled from me. That is behind us.”

Genji drops down from the window sill and walks towards him. He reaches out and takes Hanzo’s clammy hand and encloses his sword around it. In a way they were never raised ( _with tenderness_ ), he holds onto his hand for a little longer.

“You can do this.”

Hanzo chokes past tears he didn’t know he could still cry and grips the sword of his own accord.

“I can.” Hanzo takes the sword and leaves his brother in that destroyed hotel room.

 

He cannot find her. He loops around the entire neighborhood; it gets to the point where he is back at the beginning just behind Mccree’s defending team with their entire payload of illegal goods and she is still in the air. Has she left the site? Is she gone?

Hanzo holds his sword at his side in one hand. It is not as long as it should be; he is a bit taller than Genji afterall, but his calloused hands are nevertheless still in practice. He switches on his comm. “Visual on Widow?” He asks.

“Nah!” “No!” “Nein!” “I’m a little busy for that, old man!” “Nothin’!”

Hanzo’s view slides over the landscape again. Nothing, no blue. _Where could she have gone?_

“ _Cherchez la femme_ ,” he hears suddenly, as if she is right in his ear. He whips around and sees her with her arachnid-mask activated, her sights trained on something just past Hanzo. He turns around and sees who her marks are set on; Mccree.

If Hanzo were still a commander, his first order of business for his long range snipers would to be to take out their strike commander. Without order, war fails.

Hanzo is not a commander.

He is sprinting into the sightline before he can think, sword raises peripherally in front of him; it barely reaches his breastbone before there is another crack like thunder, splitting the small hill where battle took place. He can hear another curse on his earline, but he is too busy planting his feet in the ground and changing his center of gravity. The bullet on his sword has the force of a bullet to his chest with none of the pain; Hanzo lets out a grunt of exertion.

The sniper round reflects back into the sniper herself, missing her head by mere milimeters. Stunned, her mask deactivates and Hanzo sees a calculating confusion in her dead eyes;

_This man is not a close range fighter. He is not priority; he is not a close range fighter but is a long-range bowman. That is not his sword. He is not priority._

“Next time I will not miss,” Hanzo snarls cruelly, and his planted foot pushes off the ground.

“私はドラゴンの翼です！” A curse not uttered for ten years crawls out of Hanzo’s throat, just as a croon behind him says, “Y’all better run for the hills, it’s  high noon.” Five gunshots echo in the air, and Hanzo is thrusting with his abdomen just as taught, and briefly he sees his father’s face telling him to hate what he kills. He can vaguely see the roaring cerulean dragons guiding his elbow, their fearsome maws wide. He has not seen them this close in years, not since...

Then he is thrusting Genji’s blade into Widowmaker’s middle, and black blood is dribbling out of her mouth, but there is also a noxious gas exploding into Hanzo’s mouth. Before he can strike again he is retreating, the blade is slipping out of her, and Widowmaker is withdrawing. She flees with a snap of her grappling hook, black blood slipping out of her like french wine.  
He can barely see as he stumbles back to the group. The smog is crushing his lungs, robbing him of light, and he feels out with one hand to where he thinks Overwatch might be. Before he can stumble any farther, a gloved hand is taking his arm and pulling him close. “I gotcha, I gotcha, no need t’wander,” Mccree croons into his ear.

His hands come up to grip his face and wipe away tears trickling down it. The gas _burns_.

“The hostile fled,” Hanzo gasps. “Grievously wounded. She might not live to her dropship.”

Mccree laughs a low laugh and pats his face. “I saw, Hanzo. That was unlike what I’ve seen before an’ I only saw _two_ fancy tricks. Can’t imagine you in y’prime.”

“Prime? _Prime?_ Old man, I am still in my prime!”

“Y’sure, and I ain’t got a prosthetic arm.”

Mccree’s prosthetic arm is much warmer than his real one. He does not let Hanzo’s forearm go, even when his sight returns, even as they all return to the ship. Hanzo returns Genji’s sword. “Just like when we were boys,” Genji teases as Lucio pours water on his currently-ignited hand. “Only when you were a boy, you would’ve aimed for the heart.”

“Ha! I did. I am out of practice.” Hanzo’s harsh laugh hurts his raw lungs, and he coughs briefly after.

“Bullshit, you softie,” Genji quips again. He is rushed off by Lucio to stem the bleeding in his hand (he still did have blood, after all).

Mccree does not let go of Hanzo’s forearm. He holds onto him all the way into the dropship.


	2. Domestic Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo and Jesse talk about their childhood.

The snow fell thickly in King’s Row, and the guns fell silent.

 

Hanzo glowered out the window. A reconnaise mission with none other than Jesse Mccree, and the bad guys decide to not show in the event of snow. It was december in England and Talon hadn’t scheduled or expected snow? What kind of incompetent mistake was that? This was supposed to be an international terrorist organization, not a backyard hobby. But despite their tardiness, still Hanzo sat in the starbucks on the corner and looked out the window, watched the snow fall thick and cradled his tea closer to him and waited for their arrival. Stormbow was tucked in a cloth case hanging on the chair, silent. The japanese man was beginning to doubt that he was going to use it. 

 

Despite the weather, people were still coming and going. People shopped for christmas in jumpers and scarves, kids in thick jackets toddling around and shoving their red hands into the snow, dogs on walks and omnics in sweaters… Despite the disharmony here in Kings Row, despite the snow, their lives went on. Riots that had burned buildings and destroyed the streets only nights earlier were all cleaned up and covered, and only a few distrustful looks were thrown at the omnic couple window shopping with their heads pressed together.

Christmas. In Japan, it was a holiday for lovers. It was rarely celebrated in the home with the family like it was in Europe. Couples went out on dates or to the temple or generally just enjoyed each others company. By that logic, Hanzo has never celebrated Christmas. He never dated anyone and he turned down anyone that had expressed interest. His interest was in his family, in his work. Genji rarely spent a Christmas home; a different girl or boy each year, sometimes many a day.

Hanzo could grow fond of this European Christmas. He wasn't sure about these Christians, but the gift of charity and goodwill and the importance of family... Hanzo could get behind that, ironically. Even if he didn't have any goodwill or charity or any real tie to his family anymore. 

 

Hanzo took a sip of his tea and scowled. Green tea. He was not fond of it; he had always thought that it tasted more like rot than refreshment. But Jesse had went ahead and ordered for him without asking about his preferences, and Hanzo guesses it was a good assumption, so he didn’t tell Jesse what a foolishly basic mistake it was. 

 

It’s not right to deny Jesse’s generosity. Hanzo swallowed his distaste and took another sip. 

 

Jesse was at the counter buying himself another coffee. Hanzo could see his awful christmas sweater from here, the garish red-and-green striped abomination sticking out like a sore thumb when coupled with his stetson. He watches his back, his shoulders, trails down to his…

 

A bitter sip. Eyes out the window again.

 

The children are attempting to make snowballs, but the snow isn’t wet enough. They fling half-formed handfuls of snow and ice at each other, laughing all the time. Their attempt at a snowman is going just as well as predicted; another pair slave over a small, dismissable middle piece. One has gives up and flops on the ground to make snow angels.

 

Snow in Hanamura fell in thick drafts over the night, into the morning, in drifts during the day. It stopped no activity. The highschoolers still went to school, the blue-collared still to work, and Hanzo still to training. Genji had a different training schedule than him, he remembers. They only naturally had different levels, different strengths. Genji was always much more flexible than him, faster than him, could jump higher than him. While he learned advanced acrobatics, Hanzo climbed with frozen hands up iced walls, he practiced his camoflague, he went to his accounting tutor and learned about bookkeeping for a company, and then directly to his uncle to learn about poison.

 

But his uncle wasn’t even out of bed when he arrived in his room. He was curled under his kotatsu, his own paper door to the garden open wide. His children, Hanzo’s counsins, played in the snow with shrieking laughter. He turned to Hanzo and said, “Oh, what are you doing here?”

 

Hanzo stopped uncertainly in the doorway, books clutched in his hands. “...Learning?” He said uncertainly. “We… We are supposed to work together today, yes?”

 

“We were, but it’s snowing. Go take a snow day. Go, find Genji, go play.”

 

Unsurely, Hanzo did.

 

He found his little brother on a balance beam, walking steadily on the wooden line. He flipped over onto his hands when Hanzo entered; he was always so eager to impress his older brother. Hanzo dismissed his teacher and said, “Uncle said to take a snow day.”

 

“Really? Does father know?”

 

“I… I don’t know," Hanzo answered unsurely. What would their father say to him if he found out he was skipping lessons to play in the snow like a child? He would rebuke Hanzo, call him a disgrace.

 

“Well, who cares!” Genji, just six then, had taken Hanzo’s hand and lead him to their mudroom where they stumbled into their warmest clothes. He held his hand all the way outside, until the little traitor had let go to secretly assemble a snowball and shove it down Hanzo’s parka. 

 

Hanzo carries as much snow in his arms as he can and chases Genji, for  _ revenge.  _

 

“Ha-chan, no, please, let me go, I’m sorry!” Genji’s laughing shrieks turn into genuine screams, blood gurgling at his lips, “Anija, please, don’t,  _ stop _ .” 

 

Hanzo’s eyes turned dead on the kids in the snow in King’s Row.

 

“Hanzo, I’m back,” Mccree says as he drops in the seat opposite Hanzo. Hanzo doesn’t respond, his mind in a different place and a different year. 

 

“Hanzo. Hanzoo,” Mccree tries again, but when Hanzo still doesn’t respond, he follows his gaze to the children outside. A half-formed grin appears on his face. He reaches out with his prosthetic arm to very gently prod Hanzo.

 

Hanzo startles, his head flicking back to Mccree. “What? Pardon, I was not… here,” he says lamely. Here physically, but thirty years in the past mentally.

 

“Thinkin’ about kids?” Mccree says with a smile. Hanzo shrugs and takes another sip of his tea.

 

Ugh. He had forgotten it was green tea. 

 

“I suppose,” Hanzo answers vaguely.

 

“You ever want kids, yerself?” Mccree levels his coffee to his mouth right after the question, eyes deflected elsewhere. Carefully put together nonchalance. Hanzo’s tea cup hits the table with a ceramic noise, and he tears his gaze off the children in the snow.

 

Mccree and Hanzo have been… dancing around  _ whatever _ they were for months now. This was only a  _ proper _ part of ‘dating’, wasn’t it? The ‘future’ talk.

 

“I did not... _desire_ them, but I knew I would have them,” Hanzo says again. He folds his hands under his chin and rests his head. “It was just my destiny and duty, as it was to be the Shimada lord. I pictured my children and Genji’s children living together, growing together… It was not to be.”

 

“Did you know you were gay then?”

 

“I believe so. I… I knew that there was something with me that was not  _ expected _ , but I would conform regardless. I would always have conformed regardless.”

 

Mccree nods slowly in understanding and sympathy. Hanzo's sexual identity was something they had discussed just recently, and Hanzo had grappled with the fact that he was  _allowed_ to do as he wished, as he felt. But even now the idea of romantic relationship terrified Hanzo-- not even three months ago he couldn't see himself living to the next day, and anything that vaguely sounded like 'long-term commitment' send Hanzo for the hills.

 

"Well, you want kids now? Aside from duty an' that. I mean just for yerself," Mccree wondered aloud, his tone quiet and reserved.

 

"I do not have a good track record with family."

 

Mccree flicks his stetson up and lets out a deep chuckle that doesn’t fit with the mood of Hanzo’s confession. The inevitable need to  _ fix himself. _ “Well, I ain’t ever seen ya with kids, so I can’t say if you’d be a good pa or not.”

 

Hanzo too laughed but it was humorless. He could nurture nothing in life; these are hands meant for death. Let us consider his resume; one he killed, another he shunned, one he pretended did not exist, and the others he abandoned. But he humored Mccree. “I was told I was a very good brother to Genji, when we were younger.”

 

Mccree hummed, his interest alive.

 

“We were… very young, when the Omnic Crisis had began. But even before that, as soon as I knew what sort of  _ dangerous _ things my father did, I declared myself Genji’s… protector. I would hold his hand everywhere, all the time. He grew attached to it and we would wander around Hanamura holding hands for several years. My mother delighted in taking pictures of her boys holding hands. In retrospect, it was less for him than it was for me. I was scared of omnics and their airstrikes, and assassains and their blades…,” Hanzo took another deep draw from his tea.

 

His eyes drifted to the children playing in the snow again, thought to a snowfort built with Genji when he was 9 and Genji was just 6. 

 

“Genji know that?”

 

“I am unsure. It is hard to talk about our past, aside in battle. We both still delight in violence,” Hanzo took another sip. He didn’t want to talk anymore. It was so simple when they were boys, holding hands and building snowmen and dumping ice down parkas. He doesn’t want to think about Genji running off to play in the arcade as a preteen, and Hanzo waiting for him at home fearful he had been kidnapped. He doesn’t want to think about Genji stumbling home drunk, or high, off his mind from marijuana or cocaine or ecstasy. He didn’t want to think about prying Genji off the sewer drains, prying the heroin filled syringe out of his hands. He didn’t want to think of shaking off his guards and drawing into a pulsing nightclub, searching restlessly for his brother who had been missing for days. He didn’t want to think about how far Genji had fallen; he didn’t want to think of what he did to Genji in some attempt to fix what was not broken.

 

“Genji might still have pictures of us holding hands,” Hanzo comments, his eyes muddied but otherwise untelling of unpleasant memories. “He enjoyed them more than I did. In love with himself, even though he was as fat as a boar as a toddler.”

 

Mccree dissolved into laughter. “As a boar?” He questioned between his heaving bales of laughter. 

 

“Absolutely circular. He would wear footie pajamas until he was three, and in every picture I am in perfect traditional garb and looking as…,” Hanzo trailed off, trying to name the emotion on his face.

 

“Grumpy?” Mccree supplied.

 

“ _ Discontent _ . Discontent as could be in each one.”

 

Mccree chuckles into his drink, his shoulders shaking. He has to stop before he chokes, and he leans his head on the table to laugh into that.  He laughs for a few good minutes, letting Hanzo  _ discontently _ watch him lose himself over a small story from three decades ago.

 

When Mccree finally catches his breath, he leans up and on hand and wipes tears from his eyes. “You should tell more tales like that one, y’know,” he tells Hanzo.

 

“Like that one?”

 

“You know. Happy ones.”

 

Hanzo looks into his tea and sees his reflection. He looks old, drawn. He takes a drag.  “There are few of those.”

 

“There must’ve been some happy memories later on, Han.”

 

Hanzo chuckles. He supposes Genji could drag him into his trouble when they were still teenagers; Genji had dared him to pierce his nipples the moment he turned 18 in return for 180000 yen, and Hanzo hadn’t expected him to have the money. He did. He pierced one nipple. Hanzo got duped into piercing one nipple by a 15 year old. “Those are for times with alcohol.” 

 

He let Mccree laugh the man is clutching his stomach and wheezing. When it dies down into quiet chortles, Hanzo speaks.

 

“What about you? How was your childhood? If I must divulge memories from over thirty years ago, you must as well,” Hanzo raises his tea again to take another sip, but finds it wonderfully empty. He pushes it away and folds his hands together in his lap, secretly impatient for the answer, but outwardly passive.

 

Mccree shrugs halfheartedly and pulls his serape tighter around himself. “Ain’t much of one to speak of,” he says. “Oldest of ‘bout five. Got into gangs and drug dealin’ real early, had to help my ma pay the bills after pop died in the Crisis, not that he could do much alive. Got tired of bein’ the adult at home, watchin’ the kids, makin’ the food. Never went to school. Never had much fun.” He twirls his drink in circles as if the run-of-the-mill coffee was fine wine and lost himself in the brown depths. His arm whirred gently, and as Mccree flexed what would have been muscles, small gears clinked in his arm.

 

“Ma found out that I was dealin’ to bring up money instead a’workin’ for the neighbor like I told her and chewed me out. Chewed me out real bad. Got the chancla and told how disappointed my pop and grandpop woulda been. Navajo on my pa’s side, so the family bein’ disappointed comment stung like a bitch. Packed up our old revolver an’ started runnin’ with Deadlock that night.” Mccree shrugged again, like the information he had told Hanzo just now wasn’t the summarized first act of Jesse Mccree. He diverted his gaze and took a drink of his swill.

 

Hanzo had to hold back a laugh. Jesse Mccree liked to pull personal information out of people and then shied away from doing it himself. He thought he was so slick.

 

“You felt disrespected,” Hanzo ventured. 

 

“Damn right I did. Tradin’ drugs and eyein’ guns all day just to feed kids that ain’t mine, a mom that never there, had to learn to do  _ everythin’ _ by myself, all alone… Figured my damn self a full grown _adult_ at fourteen years of age.” Mccree laughed at his previous foolishness and tucked away the rest of the coffee. “My hometown was attacked by omnics not two weeks after I ran with my tail ‘tween my legs. Never figured out if my family lived.”

 

The silence between them bled on. Both of them were orphans, then. Neither of them had visited their parents graves in years.

 

“Have you considered checking?”

 

“Naw. If they're alive, they don’t need…,” Mccree motioned vaguely at his entire self.

 

Hanzo hummed absentmindedly and eyed the children again. He could relate to Mccree's statement. He thought about calling one of those kids outside his own, perhaps with his own hair and a dragon of their own and a castle to call theirs...

 

“I sympathize. I lost my mother in the Omnic Crisis as well.” Hanzo has not thought about her in decades; she was lost to time in the photographs of a round Genji and a good older brother holding hands in the snow.

 

She had died two days before the ceasefire. Hanzo had cowered and watched her be shot full of holes from a rampant Bastion unit and he did nothing. It was the first time he would let down his brother, his family and it would not be the last.

 

“Lost a lot of good people durin’ the Omnic crisis. Easy to forget that it ain’t over, for some of us.”

 

Hanzo nodded. “It will never be over.”

 

The two veterans sat in the silence for a little while. Mccree politely stacks their cups and checks the time. “It’s nearly three hours past the time Winston told us,” he said. “Think they ain’t comin’?”

 

“They are not coming.”

 

“Shame. Might as well enjoy th’day off. Another tea?”

 

“Chai this time.”

 

Mccree ventured back up to the counter to order more drinks for the two of them. Hanzo could hear the friendly boom of his voice calling ordering for him. 

 

A family. 

 

Something he did not deserve, despite how much he wanted one.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this is kind of a depressing thing. i always wondered why no one ever talked about the omnic crisis when it came to their childhood? at the timelines im looking at, the omnic crisis started when hanzo was 8 and mccree was 7, and ended when hanzo was 15 and mccree was 14
> 
> they had to lose someone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading chapter one! translations:
> 
> 1\. I got shot! I got fucking shot, shit, shit!
> 
> 2\. Genji, where is she?
> 
> 3\. She's on the ground.
> 
> 4\. Are you crazy? You can't fight a sniper with a bow in short range! Widowmaker also has a machine gun, you know.
> 
> 5\. I am the bladed dragon!


End file.
